Snowbear

A Mansfield Park and Pride & Prejudice fanfiction

Chapter Eight:

The scene at Lessingby would have been picturesque if the weather were finer, if the ladies were not stomping their – admittedly well-shod, in fine fur-lined boots – feet to keep from feeling the cold and not, upon occasion, glancing at one another as if to silently say, "Surely our brother is done composing his practice sermon now and will not mind us going back into the warmth of the house? He cannot reasonably expect us to remain out here all day. Though, even Mr. Bertram has been ushered out and is sitting in the wicker-seat, never-minding the settled dew, so supposing he means it? Well, another five minutes, then?"

There were not only the three Miss Owens, but a fourth to their party, Miss Bennet, who Edmund had not previously realised they were acquainted with (they knew her, evidently, via the shared acquaintance of one Mrs. Collins from Hunsford) and had not expected to encounter; but they were pleased to see each other again nonetheless, given his gentleness had prevented their parting on any unpleasant terms after the pianoforte incident at Mansfield.

When Dick rode up on Sir Thomas Bertram's horse, Miss Bennet was the only lady in the party who was seated, in an identical wicker-seat across from Edmund's place, spectacles slightly askew upon her face, patiently turning over the leaves of a Conduct Book and apparently impervious to the elements while her prettier, more delicate friends stood stamping in place to keep from going numb.

All three Miss Owens rushed at – quite prepared to descend upon – the rider in a very forward manner which made Edmund fight back a grimace – they were good, unaffected girls, and he liked them, had frankly and openly confessed to their brother when he asked that he did in fact like them all very much (he would not have minded too greatly if one of them had, back when the chance had been offered, married Tom and become a permanent fixture at Mansfield), but their behaviour was not always as it should be; they had not Fanny's true modesty nor Miss Crawford's natural talent for making any drop in manners on her part entirely passable for mere liveliness of mind.

But no sooner had Edmund finished with clucking disapprovingly at the young women for seizing upon entertainment by means of practically ambushing a strange man astride an equally strange horse, who might be anyone, than he recognized Richard Baddeley, knew it must take something very serious indeed for his father to send him instead of trusting a message to the post, and blanched.

(The Miss Owens had enough decorum to step back and stand out of his path.)

He stood up, legs and bottom tingling from being in one position too long, and strode to the horse. "Dick, what is it? Is my father well? My mother?" He had a sudden, terrible notion it was Fanny, as she was the only young woman at home at present and perhaps her delicate health had taken an ill turn... "Fanny?"

"You parents are well, Master Edmund," said Dick, a little self-consciously, for he was aware, in part, what the letter contained – even if Lady Bertram hadn't worked it out yet because she hadn't been told, several of the servants, even before Sir Thomas sealed his missive and entrusted him with this errand, knew a fair bit about Tom and Fanny's engagement; some of the maid-servants were outright bitter towards Fanny for breaking Mr. Crawford's heart in accepting Tom.

Edmund was undeterred. "And my cousin?"

Dick reached into his coat, withdrew the letter, and handed it to him. "I was not told Miss Price was ill." This was the best he could reasonably offer.

"But the letter is about Fanny?" he breathed, his fingers breaking the seal as his eyes remained upon Dick, who kept trying to turn his face away from him.

What could be wrong?

At first he could not comprehend what he was reading; there was no sense to be made of it. Then, realisation dawning, he felt himself growing faint, put a hand to his mouth, and tried not to be sick.

No.

Hands unsteady, Edmund tried to fold the letter back up, doing so incorrectly, folding crisscross over the already set creases in the paper. "Thank you, Dick – you may return to my father."

"My journey here was nearly five hours," Dick told him offhandedly, a little offended.

"This is not my house, and we are at this moment limited to the outdoors until Owen can bear the noise inside again, forgive me but I can offer you nothing." But Edmund did reach into his pockets, removing a few shillings, and handed them over to Richard Baddeley. "Please buy yourself whatever refreshment you require at the first inn you come to."

Dick nodded. "God bless you, Master Edmund."

"And you also, Dick Baddeley – I pray you have good speed and better weather."

The Miss Owens were whispering between themselves at Edmund's turned complexion, wondering what the rider they'd hoped had had some message – some entertainment or snippet of news – for them could have told him to make him go so chalky about the face; but it was Miss Bennet, still in her seat, who asked if he had received bad news, when he returned to the little enclosure of garden space he'd left her in.

"Very bad, I fear," he admitted. "I have to return to Mansfield today – I must prevent–" He broke off, shaking his head. "I am not at liberty to tell you, Miss Bennet, but I hope you will give my apologies to Mr. Owen when he bade his sisters come back into the parlour. Pray tell him it was an unavoidable emergency."

"What of your ordination?" asked Mary, drawing her spectacles from her face and neatly tucking them away into a fold of her dress.

"I am afraid I must leave my gift at the altar, as says St. Matthew."

Despite their brother and father's shared religious occupations, and their reasonable degree (as far as he had observed and could not badly fault) of attentiveness during church services, when they were not overtaken by temptation and thus looking over at the other pews to see what their neighbours were wearing or whispering little jests to each other, Edmund somehow doubted any of the Miss Owens would have taken his meaning very quickly; yet he saw clear, and near instantaneous, comprehension in Mary's eyes, however hard they were squinting with the effort.

"Oh," she said simply, her long white fingers absently twining one of her severe black curls which had escaped its bonnet. "Oh. It is your brother."

"Yes," and this much he would – might as well, he thought – volunteer since she guessed readily, "we have something very much against one another at present, it would seem." That was putting it mildly; he was so incredibly angry with Tom, he had to silently pray for the strength, and this he would be doing all along the road, not to simply hit him when he would see him at last at home.

"I find siblings are often a source of great impractical frustration from time to time myself, though my sister Kitty gives me less grief than she used to when Lydia lived at home with us."

"If the rest of your sisters are anything like Mrs. Bingley," said he, naming the only sister of hers had met, "I'm sure they are all exactly as they ought to be."

Although he meant it as a compliment, and she figured as much, Mary bristled slightly, her expression grown tighter, pinched, closing off. "None of us – not even Lizzy – is like Jane – that is, Mrs. Bingley – much to our mother's disappointment."

Edmund hesitated; he wished to say he hoped he had not offended, that he hoped, too, if he was able to resolve the matter at home and come back she would still be here, visiting, so he could once again make nice the feathers he unwittingly rumpled, but he said none of it – his mind was, after his father's letter, too full of misery for Fanny and rage at Tom to attend in any extended measure to her feelings.

"I shall try to remain here another week," blurted Miss Bennet suddenly, as he bowed and turned to go, wringing his hands. "In case you–" She reddened. "In case..."

Edmund nodded, almost relieved she had said what he'd failed to. "In case," he agreed, granting her a small smile from the corner of his mouth, which was real enough though it did not come anywhere near reaching his eyes.

Not only had Edmund planned to stay away long enough to avoid another meeting with Miss Crawford after she had made her feelings against his profession so plain he could no longer take them for mere teasing, but he had been considering remaining away double that; the Owens had been pressing him to stay on another five or six days past even his and Mr. Owen's set ordination and he had been on the point of accepting their offer.

But coming back to Mansfield so long before this and having to pass the parsonage – as he walked from where the post-chaise had left him a few miles out – it was somewhat inevitable he should, despite past efforts, see both Crawford siblings again.

In the case of Henry, he was very glad to see him; his wanting Fanny, despite her having no fortune, his seeing her goodness at its face value, elevated him in Edmund's eyes.

How often he had privately, though never would he have admitted it, worried he liked Mr. Crawford only because of the feelings of the sister and the obvious outer affability of the man rather than because of any real merit in his moral character! His loving Fanny proved wrong all of Edmund's worst fears, and he was very sorry indeed his own brother had intervened with them.

If Miss Crawford would not suit for a wife after all, it did not mean in the least he did not still see her as a very desirable sister for dear Fanny.

And Henry was very downcast, poor man, gaining a great deal of Edmund's natural sympathy. He could well believe Tom had bullied him into surrendering his suit of Fanny – his brother was a born tyrant.

"I am glad to see you," said Henry, in conclusion, shaking Edmund's hand. "I... I fear I may have frightened our sweetest Miss Price a little, and I know you to be her chief friend in that house – one cannot count Mr. Bertram, whatever her kind heart makes her say about it – so my greatest worry was of your receiving a skewed account of my offer. Your brother certainly will attest to such. Our former friendship seems to matter for very little to him now. And I away in London, as I soon will be, unable to defend myself... I knew Sir Thomas would set you right; you father was most gracious, to be sure..."

Before Edmund could respond to this speech, a little unsure which way to look, Mary Crawford came around from the back of the parsonage to see who her brother spoke to nearer the road, and at first – for but a moment –he was in danger, or would have been in danger if not for a certain extenuating circumstance which prevented his being too much in love with her again, of softening to her, of thinking she was at least very sorry for how she had spoken to him last and he ought to be just as sorry himself, would have much cause to be twice that sorry in future, only her happy countenance quite closed off as she made a mental calculation in her head and frowned.

"You were not to be back before the new year, I think," she said, swallowing, trying to be sweet but slipping somewhat. "Or am I mistaken and already addressing the Reverend Bertram?"

"My father wrote to me," Edmund explained, dropping her gaze and reaching into his greatcoat for the letter. "Fanny–"

"Oh, don't talk to me of Fanny!" cried Mary. "Simple girl! Why would she not have Henry? I shall never forgive her."

"Mary, don't talk nonsense," her brother cut in, affecting a smile and putting a steadying hand upon her arm. "You love Miss Price and I daresay, if you can see her before you leave, you'll forgive her in an instant. That is the way your heart works. Some memory in the surroundings of Mansfield, of the house itself, will trigger your sympathy. Or some sweet look in her beautiful light eyes."

"Her eyes should be darker," was Mary's flippant remark. "They would then be what can be called pretty, I daresay."

"I should not change nor exchange them – in their hue or content – for all the world," declared Henry, looking to Edmund. "And I daresay our friend here would not alter his cousin, either."

"No, I think he would not." Her tone was going cold. "After all, he left the church behind, forgot his ordination plans, for her, when he would not do so for any other attachment of the heart."

Oh, Mary, thought Edmund, desperately sorry for her but somehow more certain than ever before he had made the right choice in going to the Owens to begin with.

To have compromised his principals as well as his desires and gone into the law – for it was too late for him to be a sailor, and too dangerous, with an heir such as Tom set to inherit Mansfield, to be in the army – would have been a grave error; he would have felt it all his life.

Still.

If only Fanny had managed to love Henry in the way he obviously loved her already – as she really might have done if not sprung upon, as was Crawford's slightly misguided way, and if Tom had not put his oar in – and to tell him yes, Mary might be on the point of gaining such a sister that she might be tenderly put beyond the reach of those London friends she spoke so often of, who he fancied led her astray and contributed to the corruption of her mind, to the ruin of what otherwise was a perfect and warm heart!

"I think, Miss Crawford, if you learned your brother was engaged to someone unsuitable, you would have abandoned all and gone to his side as quickly – I think, in this" – Edmund's voice was soft, trying to keep her spleen from rising – "we are as much alike as ever we were."

Tears shone in her eyes, near ready to brim over. "Mr. Bertram, I like Fanny – you mustn't go away thinking I don't because I called her simple in my anger and have declared I shan't forgive her, and because I was cross with you for loving her better than you do me – I love her as well as Henry, I do! I wanted her to marry him! I approve his choice from my soul!"

"I know you must love her, Miss Crawford, and I wish you both well from my heart." He added, "If only you would think of my cousin more justly. I do not fancy any of this her fault."

"Some blame she must take," was Mary's protest, but she said it sweetly, anger quite gone away. "Though, now I cool and think on it, I believe I might readily forgive her if she can yet be saved from making a foolish mistake – and if her refusal was what prevented you from your own misstep and has given me hope..."

Here, Edmund put up a hand. "I will be ordained – even if I cannot return to Peterborough in time this year, the matter is still very much a set thing."

"But there is time for it to change now," she said, almost more to herself than to him. "Whereas very little before."

"Do not hope for me," Edmund said flatly. "Dear Miss Crawford, you know what I felt before the ball" – he glanced askance at Henry, uncertain he wished to address this before her brother, who discreetly looked away and pursed his lips in the opposite direction as if he were whistling – "but too much has occurred since then for me to–"

"Oh? And which of the Miss Owens am I to congratulate?"

"None."

She closed her eyes, a few tears spilling over the sides. "I don't believe you."

"Forgive me."

"I don't – no, I don't forgive you and I imagine I never shall – it is very hateful, your asking me to – you're as bad as Fanny in your endless, needless self-denial, Mr. Bertram." Her eyes opened again and stared into his. "You both are cut from the same cloth and ought to go about whipping yourselves constantly and have done with it."

Here, Mr. Crawford allowed himself to be hearing the conversation again, in order to interject that he would rather die than see Fanny's flawless, soft skin whipped – by her own hand or by anybody else's – and Edmund thought, albeit the remark was undeniably mawkish, this might well be the surest sign yet of Henry's love for his cousin being just what it ought to be.

Then, as if finally being able to see anything but Fanny's face constantly before him, Henry hastily – and in a very different voice – added, "But dusk is quite setting in, and you will want to be at the house – and in the parsonage Dr. Grant will wonder if we do not take supper with him." He took Mary's arm. "My sister and I bid you adieu and hope you will give our love to those in the house if you think it right."

Tom had been absent all day, and when he returned at the onset of evening, he found the drawing-room empty apart from his mother – who was asleep already – and Fanny, who was just completing some needlework and setting it aside as he entered.

With no apparent company to deter him, he kicked off his shoes and absently removed two layers of stockings to get at his feet and began – with a little pair of silver scissors his mother had abandoned by the foot of the sofa earlier – cutting his toenails.

Fanny glanced away shyly and tried to find someplace else to look, some other occupation, contemplating with dread the new poor basket where several articles were always waiting and wondering if – as her aunt Norris was not here tonight – she might this once avoid it, too.

Suddenly releasing an oath under his breath, sounding very put out, Tom called, breaking into her rebellious thoughts, "Fanny, I need you!" at a volume which might suggest her to be a room away rather than only a rug and a chair's distance, a few feet at most.

She was up in a moment, looking to him again.

He showed her the scissors and had the decency to appear slightly sheepish. "Smith has the night off, and I can't make scissors work with this hand. Would you mind, terribly...?" There was a slight gesture down at his half-done feet.

Another woman – even of the same general sort as Fanny, but perhaps less acquainted with him than she – would have recoiled, would have at the very least wrinkled her nose.

But Fanny was not particularly fazed. The truth was, having known him since she was ten, there was precious little – in this direction – he could do or ask of her which would really shock her, let alone outright disgust her.

He'd once – when she was eleven – pinned her down and pretended to drool on her before sucking the wad of saliva back up and laughing as if it were the very best jest in all of the world, only then he'd gotten distracted at the wrong moment and really had spat upon her face, unable to suck it back up in time, though he later swore it was entirely by mistake and he did not mean to do it.

Eleven had been a rather trying year for Fanny, actually, where her cousin Tom was concerned – because, of course, that was also the year he had locked her inside the pantry till she fainted, and – when she'd thought their interactions would be no more humiliating than simply that – her first monthly courses came upon her a few weeks later, she not having any idea what it was, being the eldest girl in her own family, and he'd teased her mercilessly, quite convinced her she was on the point of death, until Maria intervened and said he was a beast to say such things to a helpless lady.

"S'not a lady," he'd sniffed, releasing her into Maria's care, the fun quite at an end from his perspective, and shrugging before he walked away; "it's only Fanny."

Add to those instances above the fact Fanny had plenty of times seen Tom snort snuff up his nose in a very unflattering manner and seen him inebriated from drinking too much wine at dinner, and she could not find the mere presence of his bare toes all that oppressive in comparison.

So she bent down now at his feet and began carefully cutting his toenails.

"You're better than Smith," he told her, after a moment. "Your little fingers are so quick and neat. He always goes too far in – he'll bleed me like a surgeon one of these days."

Fanny peered up and smiled at him, and he grinned back, thinking her manner to him very pleasant at this hour.

She was thinking, not for the first time since she'd promised to marry him, being leg-shackled to Tom all her life mightn't be the worst fate imaginable. If the most he would require from her was help with his feet now and again, and if he was going to be so – of a sudden – open fisted and liberal with his praise, one could almost imagine this turning into rather a cushy situation.

And so little would have to change!

She would be called Mrs. Bertram, instead of Miss Price, and she would have to become used to being referred to as Tom's wife in passing, which would be strange at first, she imagined, but otherwise she could envision no great difference in her future.

Don't be ungrateful, she reminded herself, sighing a little as she worked, don't wish he were Edmund instead.

As if the mere thought of the name – the name which to her was that of kings and princes and knights, of every cherished poetical figure in her head – had done it, had really summoned him home to Mansfield by magic, Edmund himself walked through the drawing-room door and saw them there that exact moment – Fanny crouched by Tom's feet, her own small feet tucked up under her delicately, cutting his nails and looking very placid and accepting.

The sight of her in a servile position towards his brother, after the day he'd endured, was too much for him to stand. "No." He strode to them and pried the little scissors, very gently, from Fanny's hand, ignoring her murmured protest. "No, I do not care what you've promised him, Fanny, you're not to be his slave. Tom's perfectly capable of cutting his own nails."

"Oh, it's all right – it wasn't as it... That is, I don't mind," said Fanny, as quickly as she could manage to get the words out, thinking – though it was hard to be sure with the mask obscuring his expression – Tom was looking cross at Edmund's intervention. His mouth looked terse, at any rate. "I was only helping him."

"It's bad enough the servants misusing you – taking advantage of your good nature – to get their chores done more quickly," argued Edmund, his eyes which were usually so warm when their gaze was upon Fanny suddenly hard as flint. "I won't allow him to abuse you as well."

Tom sighed, long and loud, rolling back his head languidly. "Let me guess" – he sucked his teeth then popped his mouth – "father wrote you with tidings of the engagement?"

Comprehension dawned, then, for Fanny, who exclaimed, "Edmund, your ordination!" in such a tone of selfless dismay his heart ached for her.

"Fanny, you are too good – but I could hardly take orders with a clear conscience while envisioning tossing Tom off a cliff-side, now could I?"

"Oi!" – from Tom.

Edmund noticed Lady Bertram had not stirred. "My mother sleeps – perhaps I should speak more quietly."

Glancing over her shoulder at her aunt and lowering her own voice, Fanny quickly said, "It isn't what you might think; Tom needs–"

"You are not obliged to throw away an offer of marriage for the sake of my brother's needs."

"What is the matter?" Lady Bertram was waking, not quite hearing them but discerning a tense note in the air. "Is that Edmund come home? I thought he would stay away until next year."

"Shh, ma'am, nothing's the matter; it is all right," said Tom, standing up and looking very pointedly at Edmund. "Is it not?"

"Indeed," he murmured, trying – and failing – to affect a cheerful expression as he went over to kiss her, aware his mother might well know nothing as yet of what Tom had done, of what he was stealing from poor Fanny.

With God's grace and mercy, Edmund sincerely hoped – as fervently as his father did – she never would.

"I was not asleep." Lady Bertram sounded both dazed and defensive.

"Of course not," cooed Tom, soothingly. "No one suspected you."

"You have lost your shoes," was her next muddled comment. "It is a cold night for bare feet."

"My shoes aren't lost, ma'am, they're beside the sofa." He was on the point of asking Fanny to bring them to him, but Edmund's tensing posture and furrowed brow made him think the better of it. "I'll put them back on, shall I?"

As Lady Bertram did not close her eyes again, and they were joined – after Tom replaced his stockings and shoes – by Sir Thomas, who breathed a sigh of relief when he saw his letter had brought his younger son home, Edmund had no opportunity to take his brother and cousin aside and set them firmly to rights as he wished to do.

Tom, very cleverly, made certain of staying just out of his reach all evening and – although it seemed effortless, it was not entirely so – managed to avoid being corralled into any tête-à-tête; he even slipped soundlessly into the hallway and up to his own rooms while Edmund and their parents were speaking, deep in conversation about Lessingby and the Owens, so he could not immediately follow.

It was Fanny alone, therefore, though Edmund would not have it so if he could have spared her, who must be set upon – as gently as possible – the following day, when Tom would remain indisposed for hours, and made to see sense.

A walk in the shrubbery, as the day was clear and not yet too cold, was suggested, and for likely the only time ever in her life, Fanny was very sorry to be alone with Edmund thus.

Her spirits were low, half resolved and half full of guilt, if not tinged with any real remorse, because she could not have – she told herself – done differently, with Crawford's attacks so relentless and unexpected, and Tom's need of a bride so pressing...

Edmund, taking her arm, was obliged to broach the subject unaided by saying, "You must talk to me. Am I to hear of it from everybody but Fanny herself?"

"I think there can be nothing left for me to tell." Between her uncle and whoever else he referenced – and she had her suspicions – he must be very well informed indeed.

"The facts I know, though I can scarcely credit them," said Edmund. "But what of your feelings, Fanny? What can have oppressed you so greatly to make you betroth yourself to Tom? I go away for a little while and everything changes so quickly as that? I have never detected any symptoms of love between you and Tom – and, forgive me, but I believe Tom incapable of loving you.

"There have been times I've thought it would be deeply interesting to see Tom in love and, better still, in doubt of his lover's feelings, and imagined the immeasurable good it would do my brother's humility, but I cannot think he feels that for you – you are too much a sister to him."

Gnawing her bottom lip, Fanny murmured, in weak defence, "He isn't my brother."

"Not so much as to make it improper, perhaps, not if you really loved one another, but" – and he looked over his shoulder as they went around a length of potted plants left too far out in the path by some absent-minded gardener or other, still holding her arm and guiding her – "I have seen Tom, in his desperation, make a most pretty offer – or very near – to every sort of woman you can imagine; he has latched onto you, most abominably, as a last resort." He sighed. "I think it monstrous."

"We think too differently," said Fanny, still in severe dejection, suffering from quite the lingering fit of the blue-devils, "for me to find any relief in talking of what I feel." To her, Henry Crawford's offer was the monstrous one, Tom's merely selfish despite elements of it being mutually beneficial (and this she had known unaided).

He was astonished. "Do you suppose we think differently?"

It pained her to say so, but she owned to it with as much composure as a trembling chin would permit; she felt certain he, because of his fondness for Miss Crawford, would rather her – as would her uncle – have accepted Mr. Crawford, and this she was very sorry but could never, never do.

"Never, Fanny? This is not your rational self – what nonsense has my brother filled your head with to gain his own ends?" And his expression darkened.

She shook her head. "Tom hasn't said anything against Mr. Crawford – he simply noticed my distress and..." Her throat and chest felt as though they were tightening, being squeezed shut, air cut off. "Oh, it is no good, because you blame me for it, I am sure."

"Blame you?" cried Edmund, nearly dropping her arm in surprise as he stopped walking and faced her. "Oh, no, dearest Fanny, no. As much as I would wish you to have accepted Crawford, for the sake of happiness all around, if you do not yet love him, it only shows how good you are, how lacking in vice, that you refused him."

Her heart lightened. "This is such a comfort!"

"But, I have to say – under Tom's manipulations – you have taken it too far."

Her heart was a stone again, sinking within her.

"What chance," he continued gravely, "can Crawford have to attach you now, to win the love he rather overextended himself in believing you already felt, when you've pledged yourself to Tom? This is no common attachment, Fanny! I believe he truly does love you."

"B-but..." stammered she, hoping to gain back some lost ground. "But we haven't – Mr. Crawford and myself – one single taste in common."

"There you are mistaken!" said Edmund, perhaps more warmly than he meant to. "And Tom ought to have spoken up for him in this, because they were friends as well and he knows – he knows perfectly well – you have similarities, in feeling and literature, if not those of temperament."

"It is not enough," she protested, though it cost her nerves dear to contradict him so, "and I know we should be miserable. As for Tom, I–"

"Don't imagine I can't understand the appeal such an offer has to you." His voice was gentler. "You would never care about being Lady Bertram, I know, or a baronetcy, you're not like your friend in that..." She tensed, then shivered, involuntarily at the allusion to Mary, and Edmund – almost as soon as he'd begun walking again – stopped once more. "Are you cold?"

"No, I'm all right, please go on with what you were going to say."

"But the man who means to make you love him has uphill work – I know your apprehension of being forced to quit Mansfield... My brother plays upon that tenderness you feel towards home in order to keep you for himself, and without any serious attachment to justify it!"

"He is under a curse," she managed; "that is serious."

His brow lowered. "You know that is not what I meant."

"Forgive my saying so, cousin, I'd not wound you for the world" – Fanny gathered her courage, inhaling deeply (if he had not brought her up first, indirectly, she did not think she'd have managed it in the end) – "but love between two very different people has not made you happy."

"You speak of Miss Crawford," he concluded, nodding. "And it's right you should, because seeing me suffer hurts you, but you are wrong if you suppose – even having made peace with the fact we will never be together – I do not hold a kind of lingering affection for her and think her a most desirable sister for you.

"And Henry has one advantage over his sister's heart – at least where it concerns me, for in everything else I feel it is just what it should be – he doesn't care that you have nothing. He appreciates your finer qualities."

"He does not know me." How could he? When she was forced, always, to show politeness (and this was as it should be, she didn't deny it) to a man she disliked in some varying degree and never to tell him what she really thought of his behaviour, which was not always so pretty as those who were in favour of her accepting him seemed to make it out to be. "The only qualities he can believe he loves are those he has..." But to accuse him of inventing her in his own mind was too much, and she could see it hurt Edmund, so she closed off upon that line of thought. "You must excuse me, I did not sleep well last night."

"Ah, you've taken me with you to the point at last – you see Mr. Crawford only as he was during the play, his giving us the slip when my father came home. And that is unfair – let not any of us be judged by what we appeared during that folly. Only you and dear Mary were entirely blameless in the case of Lover's Vows. Even the Bingleys were a little to blame. I will also add how much of the mischief was Tom's doing, and you are very forgiving of him."

Dear Mary. She flinched. "It is not the same thing."

"Henry has never thought on anything serious, perhaps, until you, but how could it be otherwise with his upbringing? He will make you happy if you let him, I know, but think what you would do for him! You would make him everything!"

Reddening, Fanny murmured she'd never engage willingly in such a charge.

"But you would sacrifice your principals, of not marrying where there is no affection, to save Tom?"

"Henry is capable, if he really wants to, of saving himself," was Fanny's raspy rebuttal, her voice quite giving out by this point. "Can you say the same of your brother? It may be his fault he is cursed, I do not know, but it is not in his own power to end it."

Edmund's shoulders sagged. "Your affectionate heart is pulled in too many directions and I fear I have been adding to your affliction – I'm sorry for it – but I will add one further burden, as I cannot leave it unsaid." He reached over and touched the side of her face. "Fanny, as one who means to enter the church, you know I think of – and how we often speak on – subjects of spirituality."

She nodded.

"You know and believe the husband is the spiritual head of his wife."

She nodded again.

"Can you envision Tom – who gambles and drinks and is not always in the best of company – as your head forever?"

The thought was far from sweet – Fanny could picture Tom at his worst, drunk and sometimes a little bit cruel, and easily despair there, but here were also two points in his favour:

One, despite all this, she already respected him as she did not Henry Crawford, as for eight long years she'd had hammered into her consciousness that she must respect him for his position in the household, and there was half the battle already won, and two, envisioning Mr. Crawford as her head – a man who probably wouldn't know what to do in a church if he didn't watch his neighbours and probably never opened a Bible save for a dramatic reading during a rainy afternoon – made her want to laugh almost as much as it made her yearn to cry, for him and for herself, for the portrait of misery they'd be together.

"Well, I see you are pale and sad – this is too bad after how little you ate at breakfast – so let us leave the subject awhile," offered Edmund. "If you are not yet too tired, we might walk a little longer in companionable silence before we turn to go back inside."

"I thought," said Fanny, desperate to leave behind the scene of so much strife between herself and one she loved better than herself though he did not understand it, "we might walk nearer Mansfield Wood."

"That is a way out," he noted, turning at the neck to stare at her curiously. "What tempts you there?"

"We might see the bear."

Edmund sucked his teeth. "I would much rather you stayed away from that bear – he'll only hurt you in the end."

"He laughs, Edmund, and has light eyes with feeling in them," she said softly. "He's all but human."

And, saying nothing in reply, Edmund turned his face away from her and hastily dabbed at his eyes with the back of his wrist.

A/N: reviews welcome, replies may be delayed.